[Dan416]

As crime drops and transit ridership goes up, the police must get more and transit get less. This is obvious. Straight out of the common sense revolution.

Sounds like something Tim Hudak would have done. Instead we have his minion Ford doing it.

 

[W. K. Lis]

I just don't understand why the standard 10% reduction in the annual budget had to apply to departments which saw increased patronage, such as the TTC - especially when more riders require more service. If the TTC was to decrease the ratio of budget to ridership by 10%, fine. But because ridership is up, the TTC actually took a hit slightly larger than 10%.

In my opinion, it would be reasonable that if riidership rose about 15M last year (3%), it would be perfectly reasonable for the subsidy to increase by 3%, but not a penny more. Or, just maintain it at last year's rate to improve efficiency.

In 1996, the population of Toronto was around 2,385,421.

In 2006, the population of Toronto was around 2,503,281.

Using Rob Ford great estimating skills, he expects the census results for 2011 (when published in February, 2012), Toronto population will go down 10%. Therefore, everything has to go down 10%, because he says so.

 

[Amy Rose]

In 1996, the population of Toronto was around 2,385,421.

In 2006, the population of Toronto was around 2,503,281.

Using Rob Ford great estimating skills, he expects the census results for 2011 (when published in February, 2012), Toronto population will go down 10%. Therefore, everything has to go down 10%, because he says so.

Sad thing was that Toronto wasn't even amalgamated until 1998

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Statscan does offer population counts for Metro Toronto, which has the same boundaries as the post-amalgamation City of Toronto. Makes absolutely no material difference.

AoD

 

[freshcutgrass]

I just don't understand why the standard 10% reduction in the annual budget had to apply to departments which saw increased patronage, such as the TTC - especially when more riders require more service.

It's a simple case of poor governance. It's obvious you don't have a clue how to manage or govern well when you come up with notions like cutting all departments by a standard percentage across the board, regardless of what's going on in each individual department. Rob Ford lives in a hypothetical world, and therefore makes up hypothetical rules. This is just one example of why you don't elect people who think this way. We got what we deserved. Will we learn our lesson? Given this city, we probably won't.

Why did I say that? Because history plays this out...especially in terms of transit funding. As a city, we have NEVER liked to spend money on it. Until the TTC had to start covering the boroughs in the 50's, it paid for itself. In other words, it was ALL up-front user fees. We relied heavily on the province footing a great deal of the subsidization for both capital and operational spending.

When Harris decided he wanted to completely screw the city over (all cities really), the City was left holding the bill for both. We used to spend about $260 million per year in taxes to subsidize the TTC operational budget. That is such an unbelievably small amount of tax dollars to be spent of what is quite a large system. This is absolutely unheard of in the world of urban mass transit. It's quite amazing what we got for that pitiful small amount, but it still proves what misers we are as tax payers in this city. Look at how crazy we got when we were on our own and had to fund capital and operational budgets ourselves...even when we spent more, it was still ridiculously underspending in terms of the rest of the world.

Until we start realizing we have to spend WAAAAAY more money on operating out transit system, we will be in this mess. But since we have NEVER done this, it's a habit that will not take off very easily. It will be slow. Now that we are getting money again from the province (and even a little bit from the feds, which until recently, never spent a penny on public transit), it is helping us to keep up our old bad habits.

We can't keep depending on the TTC to give good value for the pennies we give them, or the ridership to foot the vast majority of the bill for a public service, or upper levels of government to bail us out. We have to devout more municipal tax dollars to this...plain and simple. But since this is what we have ALWAYS done, change will not come easily....especially with the current administration (which totally proves my point).

Sad thing was that Toronto wasn't even amalgamated until 1998

Amalgamation was a scheme cooked up by Harris to benefit the province...not the City.